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for debts of her contracting. In two cases only were the opinions of juries taken, and in both the verdicts were for me.[1]
But the expense of defending myself against such ruination was very heavy; and I had to borrow, if I recollect, 5,000l. or 6,000l. in Scotland and elsewhere to meet it. In 1848 it was suggested that it would be a saving of interest to borrow that money of the trustees out of my patrimony, and notice was given to the bondholders in Scotland that they would he paid at a certain time. Mr Leman prepared the mortgage deed for the trustees over my Yorkshire estates; but after the preparation of the mortgage had proceeded nearly to completion, and much expence incurred therein, he told me he had discovered, what he ought from the first to have known—that the trustees could not lend the trust-money without the permission of Mrs Norton and myself in writing, and he informed me, further, that she would not give her permission, unless I consented to give her an addition of 100l. to her allowance, making it 500l. instead of 400l. I was driven into a corner by this unexpected discovery, and I had to submit to the addition. In 1851, my younger son's expenses at Oxford increasing, and my own expenses in Yorkshire being greater to keep up the rents in the then depressed state of agriculture, I learnt that Mrs Norton had been left 500l. per annum by her mother, from whom I was not aware that she had any expectations. I then proposed to her a reduction of her allowance, which she would not accede to; and, after she had received her mother's legacy and for some time enjoyed it, I did reduce it to 300l. per annum, but which she has never accepted.
Now, as to her access to the three children. My first idea upon her leaving me, was to place them with herself, and I never denied her reasonable access to them; but she made three different attempts to carry them off—from Storey's gate, from
- ↑ See the strange boast in a subsequent letter, of the rejection of Sir John Bayley's evidence by Lord Abinger, which produced this result.
